Researchers from The University of Queensland have found exactly how birds get through narrow spaces without crashing. They focused their study on budgies and how this popular childhood pet is able to navigate narrow sports. From a Futurity article on the study:

Previous research has shown that humans unnecessarily turn their shoulders to pass through doorways narrower than 130 percent of their body width. Birds are far more precise.

“We were quite surprised by the birds’ accuracy—they can judge their wingspan within 106 percent of their width when it comes to flying through gaps,” says Ingo Schiffner, researcher at the University of Queensland Brain Institute.

“When you think about the cluttered environments they fly through, such as forests, they need to develop this level of accuracy.

“When they encounter a narrow gap, they either lift their wings up vertically or tuck them in completely, minimizing their width to that of their torso,” he says.

Researchers placed cameras on birds and followed them down different obstacle courses. More from Futurity:

To judge airspeed, budgies use optic flow—the rate visual cues pass by the eyes. They don’t see three-dimensionally like humans, due to the lateral placement of their eyes and lack of binocular overlap.

The findings from this study will be applied to robotics research being done to create better drone technology.

Via Futurity.

Photo of Kirby the budgie by Andy Langager